Health Alert

Hazardous asbestos fibers at the WTC exposed more than 110,000 people to the dangerous material; this includes 80,000 tower workers, 30,000 area residents and nearly 4,000 first responders. Asbestos exposure is directly linked to mesothelioma cancer and other asbestos-related diseases.

I distanced myself from my discomfort by regarding the event as theater and inventorying the dramatis personae. They were straight out of central casting. Sander Hicks, the master of ceremonies, looked like an amalgam of Johnny Depp, Sean Penn and Matt Dillon; he kept things moving and implored “put your hands together” as each speaker came to the podium. Paul Zarembka played (and was) the left-leaning academic economist. He said, “The ruling class will do anything to keep in power.” The Rev. Ian Alterman preached gentleness, humility and respect. He said that those who have an investment in the official lies because that’s all they’ve ever heard cannot be approached in a confrontational manner.

But confrontation was obviously the preferred mode of Barry Kissin, the resident rabble-rouser who harangued the audience with the sins of elites who deliberately killed 3,000 of their own citizens and bullied “beleaguered countries” like North Korea and Iran. Nick Bryant tied the same elites to a massive network of pedophiles including almost everyone you’ve ever heard of.

The star turn was taken by architect Richard Gage, founding member of Architects & Engineers for Truth, a group, he said, of 1,200 experts in the area of the construction and destruction of tall buildings. It was Gage, the man of science and the scientific method (another stock character), who laid out the basic thesis from which everything else grew. The twin towers could not have been brought down by fire. A fire, however intense, would have left the steel girders standing, perhaps at an odd angle. The way the towers fell — in free fall, straight down, in only 7 seconds — shows clearly, Gage declared, that the cause was controlled demolition by explosives placed next to the support structures and detonated in a precisely timed sequence. In short, destruction from the inside by insiders and not by a rag-tag group of fanatics who were incapable of flying the planes they supposedly deployed with incredible skill.

Once this scenario is established, you have only to ask, first, who could have had the expertise to bring this off and, second, who had the motive to bring it off. Bingo! The government, which certainly had both money and materials and needed a pretext for starting two real wars and a metaphorical “war on terror” that could justify tight governmental and military control, torture, rendition and the passage of the Patriot Act. On this rock the house of the Truthers is built. Everything that comes up in the way of an objection can be explained by extending the basic assumption, by asking the question, “How did the conspirators get away with this one and pull the wool over everyone’s eyes?” It is always answered.

"At the end of the afternoon and before the conference-ending dinner, I slipped away. I thought about identifying myself before leaving. I should have, but I didn’t. Instead I drove home to a small dinner party: my wife and I, another couple and a friend. I told them about what I had seen and heard. The man of the couple said that on Sept. 11, 2001, when he heard the news, “inside job” was the first thought he had, although he hadn’t bothered much with the thought since. Our other guest told us that her brother-in-law was even more a partisan of the “government-did-it” view than those I had listened to. I guess you never know."

Sander or any other effective NY truther should contact him & move this forward.

Yes, I would say this is a VERY fair article. He basically summarizes and characterizes in a fairly unbiased way each speaker's main points, and he seemed to correctly grasp the core concepts of the conference, overall. I agree, this piece is not bad; we would not be bad off re-blogging it.

He struck a few punches but it definitely wasn't a "hit piece." Actually, if he deleted all of the "conspiracy theorist" language or instead said "people," the bulk of the story might actually be considered flattering and accurate.

I went there. I read. Decided to comment. Couldn't. Said comments were turned off.

I noticed that the "recommend" number under the comments were plentiful when the Truth was spoken by a commenter. However, against all odds, (how's that?) the number of commentators for the Truth, was the minority.

Brad at Bradblog.com has encountered blatant disregard for the truth, while interacting with theNYT, been in blog wars (so to speak) on various issues, the Breitbart theatrics comes to mind, that NYT clung to, the Breitbart storylines, despite the coming out of fact, that the real pimping of themselves, to the anti-ACORN (because of their successes in educating voters too, so they would vote). The elitists, like those @ NYT are just players in the theatrics, and gaming of the public, for their own rear ends, most often. NYT has become a fine item to pick up dog shit with. It would be one and the same with it.

I'm quite sure, I was tagged as "one f of those annoying Truthers" since I have spoken up there before, regarding our 9-11-01 problem that is continuing to astonish us all, especially by the willing ignorance of so many. Their program disallowed me to comment, at least it seems that way to me. They said comments were turned off, but quite a few more comments appeared after that. Did anyone else have that experience?

Said, ALBERT EINSTEIN: "Under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main source of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed, in most cases, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights."

Another irony, with the over half of the NYC population disbelieving the government, how is it that the condescending nature in so many comments? More, pro Government BS story line.

NYC population disbelieving our government with the great focus of the incident having for most part, been there, has got to be a problem for those that see their storyline of the bin Laden band of merry mean men, with religious fervor bypassing all else, "hating us for our freedoms" etc, blah, blah, blah. No, less and less of the country (and world now) buy into it anymore. We just have to keep our percentage of the population seeing ithe reality, growing. We will too.

Yeah. I had a similar experience. I started reading with 92 comments. Then I saw it bumped up to 97 and now it says 120. All the while I can't comment because it says they are shut off. Now that could be just part of the moderation process for the comments already in the queue. I thought truth was better represented in the comments than I've seen a few years ago.

I submitted a comment last night around 11 PM ET. And the comment displays at the bottom of my page as though it is still pending review by the moderator. So it's possible it has been rejected or it's possible it is really waiting in a huge backlog of comments. I'll be watching over the next few days to see if it does post. In any case, as of last night, comments had not been turned off completely.

The last thing I would want is to jeopardize Rachel Maddow's career. So I'm reluctant to broadcast this. But comment 85, if true, is quite revealing but not really surprising.

"When I first heard about the 9-11 conspiracy theories, I ignored them, believing that if there were anything to them, I would've heard about it from Keith Olbermann, Amy Goodman or Paul Krugman. Now I know better. I have a good friend who met Rachel Maddow on an Air America cruise. Maddow knows all about 9/11, but, she says, she must keep mum or it would destroy her career."

in the near future. That would fit the pattern. It would be so wonderful to see her blow the roof off by confirming and exposing the truth to her audience. However, I will not be holding my breath. Come on Rachel, prove me wrong.

for a social movement, any news coverage must be viewed as positive news coverage. it means the social movement is taken seriously enough by conventional gatekeepers to be given some news coverage, be it slanderous, dismissive, or otherwise.

when it comes to strange events relating to 9-11, i believe the "controlled demolition" thesis has become the gatekeepers' preferred target of derision. it also happens to be where there is overwhelming scientific evidence of explosions going off in the buildings before and after the planes hit (in addition to the networks' own spontaneous news reports, eyewitness testimonies collected by ny fire department etc)...

but what gets lost in all of this is how these 19 little oswalds got into the usa with incomplete visa applications largely via the us consulate in saudi arabia, for openers,how it was so many had training experiences on us military bases or in their language schools prior, as well as, in my view, the incredibly damaging admission by the pentagon that it had a top secret high level intelligence operation tracking al qaeda networks, as they described it, inside and outside the usa prior to 9-11, which they called "Able Danger."

we know what happened to those in Congress (a Republican from Pennsylvania Rep Weldon) and the actual intelligence operatives who sought to bring attention to this matter of national security breakdown...

so what did the pentagon's special operations branch do with their intelligence on al qaeda collected prior to 9-11?

able danger was quietly folded up, the military lawyers blocked the information from reaching the fbi (we are told).

but what happened with the several trillions of pieces of data they had spent so many tax dollars collecting for our national security? where is this critical database?

the pentagon brass admits they went about systematically destroying the top secret database they developed on al qaeda networks inside and outside the usa before, and then, incredibly, even after 9-11, up to and through the entire 9-11 commission hearings.

achilles heel of the government's official story? in my view yes, since it shows evidence of a conscious attempt to destroy evidence that could be used to shut down al qaeda at home and abroad, assuming the pentagon wants al qaeda shut down at home and abroad.

or perhaps the database was dangerous because it showed al qaeda being something other than an autonomous radical islamic terrorist network?

now, during this time the fbi, imediately after 9-11, arrested 3000 "muslim" suspects inside the usa, releasing all of them in short order.

even the fact the fbi totally struck out immediately after 9-11 in rounding up al qaeda suspects, offers some evidence that someone could have used the pentagon database they were busy destroying.

since then, the usa has spent a few trillion or more supposedly in a war against al qaeda terrorism led by the pentagon, whose annual official budget is now close to 700 billion per year (it was slightly over 300 billion prior to 9-11).

someone please help me with the pentagon logic here: why would you destroy a database on the nation's number 1 global terrorist enemy?

it gives new meaning to the joke about military intelligence being an oxymoron...

the only explanation i can come up with is they wanted to make sure everything was in its proper "place" for the 9-11 events, and then when they had their official narrative with its official patsies in position, and well tracked over a period of time, they folded up the intelligence operation and went about destroying the data to make sure no one could pin the tail on the pentagon's donkey....eg it was making sure the operation could be "covered" with an official islamic terrorist conspiracy tale....

so much of what seems to be important to those neck deep in the 9-11 truth movement is not so important to people outside of it.

assuming controlled demolition arguments are not going to persuade many people, those interested in building a broader movement should be open to seriously giving attention to other more mind blowing aspects of the "cover-up" which seem to demonstrate an official practice not in keeping with official rhetoric as it relates to the war on terror.

the flying out of afghanistan of thousands of senior al qaeda and taliban officials and their ranking militants with pentagon approval shortly after the invasion in 2001 was also one of those moments when the official story and narrative could not explain pentagon deals with pakistan to liberate our enemy from our all powerful army and air force in november 2001.

why were they allowed to escape? this bizarre event was given attention by one of the few true watchdog pentagon journalists in the usa's mainstream media, seymour hersch of the new yorker, among others.

he published a long article in the magazine, put his piece in an edited volume of his writings about 9-11 and the war on terror, and made several tv news appearances with other military analysts confirming that "rummy" must have signed off on this "get out of jail free" card to pakistan.

burying inconvenient facts already presented by mainstream news sources is the government's primary method of narrative control and myth making.

sometimes the 9-11 truth movement gives too much attention to the relatively complex science of controlled demolition, and not enough to things everyone already admits has happened, but never bothers to explain how and why these things could have happened if the official story were true.

able danger's database destruction cannot be denied. it has been officially admitted. the flyout of senior al qaeda and taliban operatives in november 2001 has been documented by mainstream sources.

as for the attacks of the world trade center, as much as i believe in the science of the controlled demolition thesis, i would prefer people read the freely given, uncoached testimonies of the first responders, interviewed by ny fire department officials in late 2001 and early 2002, only released to the public after the publication of the official 9-11 commission story, and now available in pdf form on the ny times website, all 500 or so, in alphabetical order.

anyone who reads those testimonies will come to doubt much, if not all of the official story of what happened that morning and afternoon in new york city.

it is a very safe place for skeptics of the truth movement to educate themselves anew.

As Northern Alliance troops prepared yesterday to enter Kunduz, fears that the city's fall might result in a massacre of foreign-born Taliban fighters may have been averted by a secret deal hatched between Pakistan and Northern Alliance commanders, with Washington's compliance.

[I always wonder why, when this is stated, the talking heads don't pause, scratch their heads and ask " just why were there so many ISI assets working with al Qaeda and the Taliban?" But then I remember how incurious almost all of the media is and how corrupt too many of them are, and get back to work educating the general public, which remains our primary mission.]

Aside from you unconventional writing style, your post is excellent and you make a very good point about all the publicly available evidence pointing to a cover up of the false flag operation.

While many find CD to be a very sexy smoking gun, the endless muddying of waters by either corrupt or deluded "experts" turns many non-science types off and I've had much better luck educating the public about all the obvious problems with the official narrative already in the msm. The historycommons.org is a great resource for this information. Sometimes you just have to plant a few seeds in the minds of some people and hope you or someone else will water them enough until true critical thought blooms.

in the 1980s and early 1990s he was a big star at duke university in the english or literature department, and along with the famous marxist literary critic, fredrick jameson, made for quite a 1-2 punch as duke sought to become the harvard of the south.

as for his little blog entry, i think you miss the significance of what stanley fish has done for the 9-11 truth movement, if in a backhanded way.

first, it is a topic most tenured and non tenured academics are scared to touch, like all professional class career minded people, 9-11 truth in the usa is not to be discussed seriously at cocktail parties, much less faculty seminars.

but he attends the event anyway, because there is an element of curiosity. he protects his reputation as a serious and reputable intellectual with his somewhat, to be kind, belittling remarks about the participants.

yet when he returns home and brings up his experience with friends, he finds out, lo and behold, the inside job thesis is not so strange, foreign, unimaginable....after all...

put it this way, the entire political culture has been built around the idea of american exceptionalism.

the entire idea of american exceptionalism is tied to the idea of the usa as the shining city on a hill, a beacon of democracy.

a sophisticated false flag operation goes down, and most people are confused by it all.

as obama admitted when he became president, he was a layman on the economy. yet he was confronted with a crisis not seen since the great depression.

most academics, and professional class intellectuals in general, are not even layman when it comes to american foreign policy. and they rely on their government to tell them the truth, tragically most believe the core of what the government says when it comes to foreign enemies and terrorists.

they are, in essence, without a clue. ditto most of the american people, if at least the less well educated are often less well socialized into official doctrine, having consumed less of it as a matter of course.

i remember trying to persuade people that yes, the pentagon was sponsoring death squads in el salvador.

when rummy said he was going to do the el salvador strategy in iraq, most people had no idea the significance of his statement.

death squads? false flag terrorist operations?

america the exceptional one?

stanley fish introduces the forbidden fruit onto the dinner table....and some of his friends actually liked the taste.

he did not have to mention that some of his friends were open to the idea, but he did, distancing himself on the one hand, and bringing the possibility of intelligent people who hang with someone like the esteemed public intellectual stanley fish on the other hand, taking such a proposition seriously.

After Ward Churchill, a few folks up in Ontario (McMurtry, especially), Jim Fetzer, Kevin Barnett, the SCAD research by Witt et al published in American Behavioral Scientist, and that other fellow... what's his name? -- oh, yeah, Dr. David Ray Griffin -- I don't think this guy is a leader in introducing the topic to academia.